Audience Feedback Important to New Work Presented in the 2004 Summer New Play Festival at Carnegie Mellon

PITTSBURGH  Carnegie Mellon University's School of Drama will once again host the Summer New Play Festival beginning Thursday, July 8, 2004. Six new plays will be presented over two weekends and begin at 8 p.m. in the Helen Wayne Rauh Theatre at the Purnell Center for the Arts on the Carnegie Mellon campus. Tickets are free to the public and will be available one half-hour prior to curtain at the box office. For tickets call 412-268-2407. Seating is limited. The 2004 Summer New Play Festival is sponsored by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

The festival has become a crucial step in the development process for writers because they have the chance to see how an audience responds to their new plays.

Through moderated response sessions following each performance, the audience gets the rare opportunity to offer impressions about the works presented. New work is the cornerstone of American theatre and the 2004 Summer New Play Festival provides this unique experience to regional audiences.

The 2004 Summer New Play Festival will showcase three new works in progress each weekend performing the work of the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama dramatic writing program alumni and students. The festival is designed to help writers prepare their scripts for productions in regional theatres around the country.

The School of Drama is the nation's oldest degree-granting theatre program and is one of five schools within Carnegie Mellon's College of Fine Arts. The College of Fine Arts is a community of nationally and internationally recognized artists and professionals organized into Architecture, Art, Design, Drama and Music, and their associated centers and programs. For more information on the College of Fine Arts contact Eric Sloss at 412-268-5765 or by email at ecs@andrew.cmu.edu.